Associate Economist

Organizational Context

UNHCR's Division of Resilience and Solutions (DRS) aims to strengthen cooperation with development and private sector partners to address protracted displacement. This involves generating better, standardized socio-economic data on refugees and host communities to inform poverty reduction, cash, livelihoods, and education programming, and to support development actors' investments. The goal is to lift displaced populations out of poverty and encourage area-based poverty reduction.

Job Purpose

The Associate Economist will contribute to the Global Compact for Refugees (GCR) objectives by enhancing refugee self-reliance and easing pressure on host countries. A key focus is measuring the proportion of refugees living below the national poverty line. The role involves supporting the design and implementation of data-driven assessments and products on the socio-economic welfare of refugees, forcibly displaced persons, and host communities. This includes facilitating collaboration with partners for collecting comparable socio-economic data, supporting data collection activities, and performing data analysis using econometric programs. The incumbent will also consolidate and clean datasets, prepare them for archiving, and support the preparation of research papers, ensuring high-quality data and relevant analysis to inform programming and policy.

Responsibilities

The Associate Economist will support the design and implementation of assessments and data-driven products related to the socio-economic welfare of refugees, forcibly displaced persons, and host communities. This includes facilitating collaboration with partners for the collection of comparable socio-economic (poverty) data and supporting data collection activities, potentially involving survey design, sampling, oversight, and quality assurance. The role involves consolidating raw primary and secondary datasets, cleaning them, and creating necessary indicators, possibly using programming matching algorithms. The incumbent will provide secondary data analysis, assist in programming survey instruments, and develop protocols for high-quality data. Datasets will be prepared for archiving on the UNHCR Microdata Library. Support will be provided for preparing research papers, including formatting and creating tables and graphs. Engagement with country operations, partners, and governments in data collection and research projects is expected. The Associate Economist will also facilitate communication and coordination among country teams, governments, researchers, and partners, and support the drafting of presentations, analytical reports, and policy briefs. Identifying research opportunities, contributing to proposals for research partnerships, and supporting reports on data collection and analysis achievements are also key duties. Risk management within the functional area of work is required, with issues to be raised to supervisors.

Work Experience

At least three years of demonstrated experience in economics, data analysis, and/or research. Desirable experience includes familiarity with the World Bank, African Development Bank, or other international financial institutions, displacement and development issues, working with the private sector, applied development economics, poverty modelling, leading primary data collection and analysis, humanitarian-development nexus synergies, measuring welfare through socio-economic profiling, and analysis of large datasets.

Skills

Project Management Networking Drafting and Documentation Statistical and modelling software Data Collection and Analysis Statistics Analysis Econometrics Poverty Modelling Socio-economic profiling Large dataset analysis R Stata

Explore related opportunities